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Born in Ohio and trained at the Yale School of Art, Margaret Morton (1948-2020) was a Professor of Art at Cooper Union for thirty years. She is best known for chronicling New York City’s unhoused communities for nearly two decades. Combining her elegant, perceptive photographs with transcribed interviews, she produced four books that bear witness and advocate for people without housing. In 2014, she published Cities of the Dead: The Ancestral Cemeteries of Kyrgyzstan. At her death, she was completing a book on Manhattan's Old Farley Post Office, which she photographed for two years during its renovation as the Moynihan Train Hall.  

Margaret_Morton_Portrait_May 2018.jpg
©Photographer Unknown

Curriculum Vitae

2017      Inside the Farley : Photographs by Margaret Morton, Architectural League of New York

2016      Inside the Farley : Photographs by Margaret Morton, Farley Postmaster’s Suite

2015      Margaret Morton: A Retrospective, Leica Gallery, New York City

             Cities of the Dead: The Ancestral Cemeteries of Kyrgyzstan, Ismaiii Centre, Toronto

             Cities of the Dead: The Ancestral Cemeteries of Kyrgyzstan, Houghton Gallery, NYC

2011      Cities of the Dead: The Ancestral Cemeteries of Kyrgyzstan, Wolk Gallery/MIT

2008     Kyrgyz Epic Theatre in New York, Kygyz National Museum of Fine Arts, Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic

2007     Janyl in New York, B’Art Center Gallery, Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic

             Celestial Cities, Spring Street Gallery, Saratoga Springs, NY

2004     Glass House, Urban Center Galleries, NYC

2003     Die Architektur der Obdachlosen, Galerie Stasia Hutter, Basel, Switzerland

             Fragile Dwelling, Zeitkunst Kitzbühel, Austria
2002     New York City Flags : Benefit for Squad 18,  The Viewing Room, NYC

2001     The Tunnel, Cleveland Center of Contemporary Art

2000    Dwelling, Burden Gallery, Aperture Foundation/NYC

             Fragile Dwelling, Palazzo Te, Mantova, Italy

1999     Sotto I Ponti, Casa Italiana, New York University/NYC

1997     The Tunnel, Galerie M20, Hamburg, Germany

1996     Fragile Dwelling, Kunstverein/Bremen, Germany

             Fragile Dwelling, Boston Architectural Center

1995     The Tunnel, Lowinsky Gallery/NYC

            Fragile Dwelling: Photographs by Margaret Morton of Homeless Communities,

            National Building Museum, Washington DC

1994    Transitory Gardens Uprooted Lives, Urban Center Gallery III, Municipal Art Society, NYC

            Transitory Gardens Uprooted Lives, Glyndor Gallery, Wave Hill, Bronx, NY

1993     Transitory Gardens:The Architecture of Despair, Lowinsky Gallery, NYC

            Fragile Dwellings, Mednick Gallery, Philadelphia

            Margaret Morton/Recent Work, N.A.M.E. Gallery, Chicago

            Two New York City Homeless Communities, Louis Abrons Gallery, NYC

1992     The Architecture of Despair : New York City's Homeless Communities 

             Institut für Gegenwartskunst/Vienna, Austria

1991     The Architecture of Despair : Building Types of the Homeless

            Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia

            The Architecture of Despair : Building Types of the Homeless, Urban Center Gallery III, 

            Municipal Art Society, NYC

1990    The Architecture of Despair : Building Types of the Homeless, 55 Mercer Street Gallery/NYC

Solo Exhibitions

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